stance and boxers’ performance

Piotr Sorokowski, Agnieszka Sabiniewicz, Sławomir Wacewicz

Anthropological Review • Vol. 77 (3), 347–353 (2014)

ANTHROPOLOGICAL REVIEW Available online at: www.degruyter.com Journal homepage: www.ptantropologiczne.pl

The influence of the boxing stance on performance in professional boxers

Piotr Sorokowski1, Agnieszka Sabiniewicz1, Sławomir Wacewicz2

1Instytut Psychologii, Uniwersytet Wrocławski, Wrocław, Polska 2Katedra Filologii Angielskiej, Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika, Toruń, Polska

Abstract: In boxing, athletes choose between two strategies: the characteristic of right handed competitors, or the characteristic of left-handers. Despite a conviction popular among the practitioners of this sport that fighting against a southpaw opponent constitutes a handicap, the effectiveness of the type of stance has so far not been examined. We extracted the statistics of the top twenty active male professionals boxing in each of the seventeen weight divisions. Out of the 340 boxers who composed our group, 75% used the orthodox stance and 25% were southpaw. Generally, we found that boxing stance had no effect on the percentage of 340 top professional boxers’ victories. However, both the southpaw and the orthodox athletes had a higher percentage of victories against orthodox boxers than against southpaws.

Key words: , boxing performance, boxing stance, , orthodox, southpaw

Introduction letes is clearly higher than the 10 to 13% characteristic of the general population The phenomenon of handedness in hu- (Raymond et al. 1996). Left handers are mans, in addition to having a large pop- most overrepresented in combat sports, ular appeal, has generated an extensive such as boxing (Gursoy 2008), judo academic literature. A considerable num- (Mikheev et al. 2002), or wrestling (Zi- ber of studies in this area concern com- yagil et al. 2010). What is more, an un- bat sports (Grouios et al. 2000; Raymond usually high percentage of left-handed et al. 1996). While right-handers clearly competitors seems to characterise sport dominate in human populations (Ray- disciplines involving direct interaction mond and Pontier 2004), the proportion with an opponent, such as tennis, fencing of left-handers among professional ath- (Harris 2010; Wood and Aggleton 1989),

Original Article: Received: 21 October 2014; Accepted for publication: 2 November 2014 DOI: 10.2478/anre-2014-0025 © 2014 Polish Anthropological Society 348 Piotr Sorokowski, Agnieszka Sabiniewicz, Sławomir Wacewicz cricket (Brooks 2004), baseball (Gold- nett 1985). This would explain better stein and Young 1996; Grondin et al. performance of left-handed competitors 1999), table tennis (Wood and Aggleton in interactive sports, which rely on high- 1989), or football (McMorris and Colenso ly developed perceptual skills (Hage- 1996). For example, of the participants in man 2009; Raymond and Pontier 2004; a variety of championship-level competi- Brooks et al. 2004). tions, 34% of top tennis player s (Holtzen While numerous studies have target- 2000), 47% of top cricket players (Brooks ed the phenomenon of left-handedness et al. 2004), and 35% of top fencers (Aze- in humans in general, and in sportsmen mar et al. 1983) were left handed. in particular, it still remains unclear How to account for the occurrence whether being left-handed constitutes of left-handedness in the general pop- an advantage in boxing. The fighting hy- ulation as well as among athletes? One pothesis and the innate superiority hy- existing explanation is the fighting hy- pothesis referred to above would predict pothesis (Raymond et al. 1996), on which that left-handed boxers should perform left-handedness is selected for because of better than their right-handed oppo- an advantage it confers in close quarters nents. To our knowledge, only one study combat. Hence, a popular evolutionary has so far been published directly test- explanation for this phenomenon in sport ing the relation between handedness and is the negative frequency-dependent selection success at boxing: Gursoy (2008) found hypothesis (Raymond et al. 1996), which that the ratio of defeats to victories was posits that left handed competitors ben- higher in right-handed than left-handed efit from using movements, techniques boxers. While this result provides inter- and tactics to which their opponents esting confirmatory evidence, his analy- are not accustomed. For example, offen- ses have important limitations. Firstly, sive actions executed by left-handers are Gursov’s sample was rather small, con- markedly more difficult to predict than sisting of results coming from only 22 those of right-handers in sports such as boxers. Secondly, all of the boxers in the volleyball (Loffing et al. 2011), tennis study were enrolled in the same boxing (Hagemann 2009) or football (McMorris club (National Road Sport Men Box- and Colenso 1996). ing Club, Erzurum, Turkey). This could Alternatively, the left-handers’ ad- easily lead to bias, since a single very vantage can be explained in terms of well performing left handed fighter in the innate superiority hypothesis proposed the sample, or a coach favouring left- or by Geschwind and Galaburda (1985), right-handers, would suffice to render whereby left-handed individuals differ those results unrepresentative. from right-handers in important neu- An important complicating factor for rological aspects. Left-handers, due to analysing boxing bouts is the stance as- a larger right hemisphere of the brain, sumed by the boxers, which is likely of tend to have visual and spatial abilities greater consequence than the inborn better developed than the population av- hand preference. Boxers adopt one of erage. For this reason, left-handers tend two available stances, mirror-images of to have an advantage in tasks involving each other: orthodox or southpaw. The bimanual coordination, visual-spatial term “orthodox stance” refers to the po- cognition or bilateral rapid reaction (An- sitioning of the boxer’s hands and feet Boxing stance and boxers’ performance 349 with the left foot and left hand forward, ed relates to boxing performance, it was and the right foot and right hand back conducted on a small sample of boxers – natural to a right-handed person. The and has other methodological limita- term “southpaw”, natural to left-hand- tions. This leads us to believe that testing ers, refers to having one’s right foot and how the boxing stance impacts boxing right hand in the front: a reverse (mir- performance is valuable and will result in ror image) of the orthodox stance. The important insights. choice of stance generally is a permanent characteristic. Very seldom, particularly Materials and methods skilled boxers such as or Floyd Mayweather, can switch be- We used the internet database Boxrec tween the stances flexibly within a single (http://boxrec.com/ratings.php) to ex- bout or round. However, each boxer has tract information on the stance and pro- a preferred stance, which is usually de- fessional record for the top-rating male termined by keeping the stronger hand in boxers in each of the seventeen weight the back: this is so because the stronger divisions (heavyweight, cruiser, light hand is used for delivering power - heavyweight, super middleweight, mid- es that require more space, whereas the dleweight, light middleweight, welter- weaker hand, kept in the front, is used weight, light welterweight, lightweight, for quicker intended to keep the super featherweight, featherweight, su- opponent at bay and break down his de- per bantamweight, bantamweight, su- fences. This strategy is universally rec- per flyweight, flyweight, light flyweight, ommended by boxing experts (see: Onel- minimumweight). Boxrec ratings are lo 2007; Scott 2000; www.expertboxing. preferable to individual boxing federation com; www.myboxingcoach.com; www. rankings because of the former’s inclu- learnhowtobox.com). siveness and objectivity: Boxrec stores in- In view of the above, we present formation on all licensed bouts and uses a study aiming at determining how the this database to produce automatically choice of stance in boxing influences the generated rankings. outcome of the fight. This type of research First, we collected the data for the to- question has its limitations, which we ad- tal of 340 boxers: top 20 in each of the 17 mit (for example, we do not directly ad- weight divisions. We then inspected the dress the influence of handedness on the boxers’ professional records, that is, for outcome of boxing fights). On the other each of the boxers using the orthodox/ hand, such an analysis is valuable in mak- southpaw stance we counted the num- ing it possible to test our hypothesis on ber of victories/defeats/draws against an a very large sample of professional boxers; orthodox/southpaw opponent. If there it also allows us to answer the question was no data on the stance of the com- of whether the stance itself influences the petitor in a particular bout, the result outcomes of boxing bouts. of that bout was not included into the In sum, to date there have been no analysis. The above body of data was col- published studies on the influence of the lected in June 2013. We used it to calcu- stance on the outcome of fights in box- late, for each boxer, the ratio of victories ing. Although a study by Gursoy (2008) that boxer scored against orthodox and looked into how being left- or right-hand- southpaw opponents. 350 Piotr Sorokowski, Agnieszka Sabiniewicz, Sławomir Wacewicz

We also conducted a second anal- [the average ratio for orthodox boxers ysis in September 2014. We collected was 0.88 (88%), SD=0.12; the aver- the data for the total of 2549 boxers for age ratio for southpaw boxers was 0.87 whom data on stance were available: top (87%), SD=0.11; F1, 308=0.13, p=0.71, 2 150 in each of the 17 weight divisions ŋp < 0.01]. (except for minimum weight, where data The above analysis, however, does not on stance were available for 149 boxers). take into account the stance of the antag- We used these data to calculate whether onist, as it does not distinguish between better boxers are more often southpaw the bouts fought against orthodox and than worse boxers. southpaw opponents. To address this, in our next step we checked whether Results the victory ratio of boxers in our sample was different for orthodox versus south- Of the 340 boxers in the sample, 255 paw opponents. The analysis showed (75%) used the orthodox, and 85 (25%) that both the orthodox and the south- – the southpaw stance. The boxers had, paw boxers had a higher victory ratio on average, 22.5 bouts in their record against their orthodox (0.89 on average, (SD=10.07), and won approximately SD=0.11) than southpaw opponents

87% of them (SD=12%). The stance had (0.85 on average, SD=0.21); F1, 308=9,88, 2 no effect on the ratio of victories in our p<0.002, ŋp =.03. Interestingly, there sample of top 340 professional boxers was no effect of own stance relative to

Fig. 1. Own stance, opponent’s stance, and the percentage of wins in professional boxers Boxing stance and boxers’ performance 351

the stance of the opponent F1,308=0.19, might preferentially draft left-handers, or 2 p=0.66, ŋp <.01 (Fig. 1). that coaches may choose to convert their Summing up, the southpaw boxers in right-handed trainees to southpaws early our sample did not win more often that in their boxing careers. It is important to the orthodox ones. Nevertheless, the or- note, however, that those explanations thodox and southpaw boxers alike scored still turn on the assumption that being more victories when fighting against an left-handed – or fighting in a southpaw orthodox opponent than a southpaw. An- stance characteristic of left-handers – other statistical measure (χ2 test) yielded constitutes an advantage in boxing. This the same pattern of results. is supported by our follow up analysis, In the second analysis, we found that which revealed that there were propor- of the 2549 boxers included in the sam- tionally more southpaws among the ple, 2027 (80%) used the orthodox, and higher ranking boxers than among lower 522 (20%) the southpaw stance. We also ranking boxers. found that across all the analyzed divi- The main purpose of this study was to sions among: examine how the boxing stance influenc- a) best rated 50 boxers this ratio was: es performance in boxing. Our analyses 201 southpaw vs. 649 orthodox (24% showed that in the sample of top pro- southpaw); fessional boxers there was no significant b) boxers rated from 51 to 100 position difference between the victory ratio of this ratio was: 167 southpaw vs. 683 orthodox and southpaw boxers. Howev- orthodox (20% southpaw); er, we also found that southpaw compet- c) boxer rated from 101 to 150 position itors scored a higher percentage of vic- this ratio was: 154 southpaw vs. 705 tories against orthodox than southpaw orthodox (18% southpaw). opponents. This apparent contradiction The proportion of southpaw boxers can be easily resolved. Since our sample was higher among better rated boxers consisted of the best active professional than among worse rated boxers; χ2=9.05; boxers, who only lost very rarely, we can p=0.01. expect a statistical phenomenon known as the ceiling effect to occur. The world’s Discussion elite boxers all have a very high victory ratio (of almost 90% on average), with Our analysis showed that 25% of the top very limited scope for variation that 340 professional boxers (20 in each of could be accounted for by handedness or the 17 weigh divisions) and 20% of the stance. Still, even for those boxers it was top 2549 professional boxers (150 in somewhat easier to win against an ortho- each of the 17 weigh divisions) fought in dox than a southpaw rival. As each of the a southpaw stance. That figure is much boxers in our sample fought twenty or so higher than expected from the proportion bouts, it was possible that it was early in of left-handers in the general population their careers. (10–13%; e.g. Raymond et al. 1996), The analyses performed in this study suggesting that fighting in a southpaw corroborate the results of Gursoy (2008), stance natural to left-handers is condu- who found left-handers in his sample of cive to better performance in boxing. Of boxers to perform better than right-hand- course, it is possible that boxing schools ers. Our research, in addition to over- 352 Piotr Sorokowski, Agnieszka Sabiniewicz, Sławomir Wacewicz coming some of the methodological Conflict of interest problems of that study, also offers com- plementary data, since unlike Gursoy’s The Authors declare that there is no (2008) sample consisting of amateurs Conflict of interest. and semi-pros, our sample comprised top professional boxers. In conclusion, it Corresponding author is likely that handedness – and the choice of stance based on handedness – plays Piotr Sorokowski, Uniwersytet Wrocław­ a certain role in the amateur or early pro- ski, Dawida 1, Wrocław 50-527 fessional boxing career, but is not impor- e-mail address: tant for performance when competing on [email protected] the top level. Generally, our results support the References evolutionary hypothesis on left handed- ness adaptiveness. As we discussed in Annett M. 1985. Left, Right, Hand and Brain: the Introduction, previous studies sug- The Right Shift Theory. 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